Acquiring Waukegan’s Super Fresh Market in 2021, the operators of the Chicago area-based Tony’s Fresh Market quickly remade the store into one with an abundance of fresh produce, meat, baked goods and more, along with traditional supermarket aisles.
Once the store was open — and shrunk in size from 100,000 square feet into a 65,000-square-foot market — with fresh food arriving easily rather than coming from an onsite warehouse, it was time to introduce features new to both Tony’s and the Waukegan community.
Entering the store and turning right, customers see five long fixtures with an assortment of fresh produce leading to the new features, including a juice bar, an ice cream counter and a kitchen with cooked meals.
Jim Marnos, the company’s director of community relations, said Tony’s planned a variety of features new to any of the company’s 21 stores for its Waukegan location with the ability to get ready-made meals and eat them on site.
“We get your attention with the freshness of the produce, the variety and the color, to give people what they’re looking for,” he said. “This is the first time we’ve tried some of these things. We wanted it to be special in Waukegan.”
Tony’s Fresh Market debuted its new features several weeks ago, and held a grand reopening with a ribbon-cutting Aug 28 at the market on North Lewis Avenue.
With signs in Spanish as well as English, and a worker handmaking fresh flour tortillas throughout the day, Marnos said the company is making an effort to gear products to Waukegan’s large Latinx population.
Along with a supply of Coca-Cola products, a customer will find a plentiful amount of both the locally bottled soft drinks as well as in glass bottles produced in Mexico. Marnos said the flavor is distinctly different.
“We have a lot of ethnic soft drinks,” he said.
Walking past the produce section, a customer finds a wall with features found in only the Waukegan location of Tony’s 21 stores. There is a juice bar with a variety of freshly squeezed juices, as well as fresh sushi.
Next to the juice bar is La Cocina or Authentic Kitchen. There are sufficient main courses and side dishes to take home for a meal or eat at one of the adjacent tables. At other Tony’s stores, customers select their cooked food cafeteria-style.
Dino Apuzzo, the executive chef at La Cocina, said the new approach creates a more personal situation for the customers. People can get more information about their choices before placing an order.
“It involves us more with our customers,” he said. “It creates a relationship. It’s our chance to really serve our customer and learn what they like. They seem to like it.”
Toward the back of the store are the bakery and meat departments. With a variety of fresh baked goods on display, including a variety of toppings on flan, Marnos said Tony’s bakes cakes to order. It is a popular part of the business. Bread is baked fresh daily.
Though the grocery aisles are fairly standard, he said the first four beyond the new features are geared toward ethnic food. Each market is tailored to the community. The first aisle in Waukegan is Hispanic. The next features Jamaican and Asian food. Beside it is a display of European, Middle Eastern and Indian food There is also Italian.
Marnos said there is also ethnic frozen food in that portion of the store.
